The Country With The Best Image Internationally Is …Can You Harbor A Guess?

As per this year’s National Brand Index (NBI), the honor of best international image goes to Germany. It seems that the country has garnered the best reputation worldwide for 2017.

The yearly survey pools 50 countries and analyzes the public’s general opinion globally when it comes to the quality and power of each nation’s brand image. It was conducted by Simon Anholt, a British political consultant as well as a marketing research firm that stems from Germany, GfK. Each country received an NBI score by measuring how individuals rated the nation based on six categories: people, governance, tourism, exports, immigration and investment, heritage, and culture.

Pressform reports that this isn’t the first time Germany has hit the top spot for this survey. The country held the number one spot in 2014; however, has been knocked off this pedal stool in 2015 and last year by the United States. It’s interesting to note that Germany hit the number one spot in five of the six categories listed by NBI, except for tourism where it hit the tenth spot.

Still, Germany may have hit number one this year, all thanks to the diminishing global image that America is suffering right now. This year, the country fell from number one spot to sixth and has been the only nation on the list to have a declining brand image for 2017. The largest drop for the country was in the governance category, where the U.S. fell to 23rd place from 19th.

France hits 2nd place on the list, which was a jump from fifth in 2016. Japan also witnessed an increase hitting the fourth spot, a rank it shares with Canada when it comes to global image. The United Kingdom hit third place and experienced an improvement when it came to all six categories in 2017; which is good news for the country considering its global image suffered tremendously during the 2016 year, thanks to the Brexit vote.